Health warning - your PC may be killing you

Technology addiction subject of academic survey

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If you've ever felt like you're a slave to your PC or mobile phone, then now's the time to have your say by participating in a British survey seeking the truth about technology addiction.

The research is part of work at the University of Northampton by Nada Kakabadse and Susan Bailey. They're looking into how people use gadgets and, most importantly, how it alters their approach to life.

Hazardous substances

As anyone who's been involved with personal computers since their early mainstream days at the beginning of the 1980s can tell you, the demands made on our time are not insignificant, nor are the benefits always obvious.

Kakabadse even compares the potential hazards of IT overload with the dangers posed by cigarettes or junk food before we even knew they were bad for us.

Hard habit to break

She says: "We don't want to be in a situation in a few years similar to that with fast food or tobacco today. We need to pay attention to how people react to potentially habit-forming technologies and respond with appropriate education and policies."

Whether you find technology aids your productivity or simply bogs you down in increasingly trivial layers of detail, the privacy-guaranteed survey is open to all comers now - the results should provide substantial food for thought.